Almond Milk

Over the past six months, I have grown quite accustomed to my unsweetened, organic soya milk. So, when the health food shop runs out of it, I feel a little lost. My usual back-up was rice milk, but now that I’ve found out I’m allergic to that, I’ve had to look at other options. I’d heard loads of people raving about almond milk. It’s quite a bit more expensive than soya milk, but everyone said it’s worth the price because it tastes so nice. Unfortunately, I don’t agree. You know when you get yourself hyped up about something that’s over-sold to you? Well, that’s what happened to me. Everyone’s tastes differ, but personally I find almond milk too sweet, even sweeter than rice milk. Although, on the plus side, it’s thicker than rice milk, so you can use it as you would soya milk.

Caffeine Cold Turkey Update

If anyone is wondering if I'm still functioning with no caffeine, the answer is yes. One week on, I feel absolutely fine. It's like I never drank coffee. After the first three days of extreme tiredness and a constant headache, I was back to normal. I'm determined to keep it up even more now.

30 Tastes of...

Someone once told me that if you taste a food 30 times, you will grow to accept it. Whilst there are some foods that I don't think I'll ever grow to like, nor do I want to (Marmite springs to mind - I'm definitely in the Hate camp), I am finding this fact to be true. As part of my allergy-free diet, I have to take 2 teaspoons of flaxseed oil a day. You can add it to certain foods, although I prefer to just down the spoonful. The important thing is that you consume it cold, as it helps to maintain the properties of the oil. Flaxseed oil, or linseed oil as it is also known, is a great natural source of omega 3, which is why I take it. The label on the bottle describes it as having a 'slight nutty taste', but as someone who generally likes nuts, I would not describe it as such. For the first few days, I had to force myself to swallow it, but the 30 tastes rule must work because, after two weeks, I find it much more bearable now. I wouldn't say I like it, but it's edible.

Caffeine Cold Turkey Day 3

Oh my God - I have no idea how people cope with coming off hard, class A drugs. All credit to them. After 3 days without any coffee, I still feel pretty terrible. OK, I will admit that I caved slightly. No, don't worry, I didn't run into Starbucks and order a double espresso, but I did take my migraine medication. I know it's not technically cheating, but I still feel guilty. Suffering two days with a constant headache and my brain feeling like it was full of cotton wool cracked me, I had to do something or I wouldn't have been able to function at all at work. I know I've been extra snappy with my colleagues this week, although the hot weather has fortunately also brought out the grumpy side of a few other people so I don't think anyone's noticed me too much.
Every morning this week I have dropped more things and walked into more objects than I did the day before. I boiled a pan of milk for five minutes yesterday before I realised that I hadn't put any buckwheat flakes in it. I'm really hoping that this feeling isn't going to last much longer. Outside of work, all I've done is sleep. I have felt SOOOOO tired. I haven't even been to the gym (apart from my pathetic attempt on Tuesday) or done any sport, which is really unlike me.
My original plan was to go caffeine-free for four weeks and then go back to just having a coffee once in a while. After seeing what it does to my body, though, I don't think I ever want to have caffeine again!

Caffeine Cold Turkey

Picking one of the hottest days of the summer to try going caffeine-free for the first time probably wasn't the best idea. It's hard to tell how much it is the sun making me light-headed and tired, and how much it's the lack of coffee. I thought the worst part would be first thing this morning when I got up. I imagined myself half-asleep, attempting to run through my morning routine and accidently putting the buckwheat flakes back in the fridge and soya milk in the coffee machine instead of water. However, I felt fine until about 10am. That's when the tiredness and the headache hit me. Considering caffeine is so addictive, I haven't actually craved it all day, although I almost went and bought a coffee to keep me awake at my desk. I persisted, though, and I've made it through the day sans-caffeine! My usual 45 minute gym workout was a bit half-arsed, and I had to have a nap when I got home, but I'm hoping my energy will come back as the days go on.

One week down, four to go...

Week one of my allergy-free diet and lifestyle is behind me, and I feel good. I'm not saying that I suddenly leap out of bed at 5am (unfortunately that's what time I have to get up for work) every morning and bounce around all day with a huge grin on my face instead of eczema, but I do feel better. One big difference I have noticed is that I'm much more focused and able to concentrate better. I don't feel as stressed, either. And I'm not really missing any of the things that I've cut out of my diet. I thought I'd be craving bread and chocolate, but it's not really bothering me. I think that's because I'm eating the right stuff so my body doesn't feel the need to crave the bad things, but whatever the reason it seems to be working.
This week my aim is to cut back on caffeine even further than I have done already. From tomorrow I'm replacing my morning filter coffee with decaf, so it'll be interesting to see how I cope without the caffeine fix and if I cave and go and buy a real coffee from the coffee shop in my office.

Day 2 of the Buckwheat Challenge

When the nutritional therapist gave me my new food plan, what upset me the most was that I have to give up my beloved oatbran for breakfast. I think I even found that harder than having to cut down on chocolate, alcohol and caffeine. I've grown accustomed to making my oatbran over the past six months, it's become a part of my morning routine.
Gluten-free alternatives to oatbran are rice and millet porridge and buckwheat flakes. I've never heard of rice and millet porridge before, plus I couldn't find it in the health food shops, so I decided to give the buckwheat a go. I was a little concerned. After all, would this new foodstuff be able to replace my love of oatbran? The shop assistant assured me that the buckwheat can be prepared exactly the same as oatbran, or porridge, and apart from a slightly different texture is essentially the same.
The texture certainly is different, although still very tasty. I've also noticed that buckwheat doesn't take as long to heat up if you're making it like porridge. That messed up my morning routine a bit on the first morning, and luckily I thought to check it before it burnt through the pan and set my whole building alight.
So, panic over, I have indeed found a more than suitable substitute for oatbran that is gluten-free. One word of warning, though. Some people have been known to have severe allergic reactions to buckwheat itself, so please check you're not allergic before trying it yourself.

Anti-Allergy Regime

I've decided to go all-out with my anti-allergy diet. The nutritional therapist recommended that I avoid everything I'm allergic to for 5 weeks and also follow a course of vitamins and supplements that she has suggested, so that's what I'm going to do. As of today, I'm taking all my B vitamins as well as two teaspoonfuls of flaxseed oil everyday. I've also bought some spirulina powder, which I have to say is one of the wierdest things I've ever consumed. It's a blue-green algae, which I always thought was just something that grows on canals and kills all the wildlife. It comes in powder form and you dissolve it in water. It's a bit messy to prepare if you don't concentrate, it looks a bit like a deep green smoothie, but it doesn't taste that bad. I think I can handle one glass a day at any rate.
I've bought some plant-based shampoo and laundry detergent to help with my contact allergies, and I took my list of things that I can't eat shopping with me today. Surprisingly, there was actually still a lot at the market that I can eat.
My consultation with the therapist also gave me lots of tips that are useful for everyone. Like drinking 2 litres of filtered water daily (I must remember to go and buy a water filter tomorrow), and not drinking and eating at the same time. It's important to allow 30 minutes between eating and drinking, otherwise the water dilutes your stomach acid whilst it's trying to do it's job, which causes heartburn. The hardest part for me is going to be remembering to drink water at work, and specifically remembering to drink it 30 minutes before my lunch break. My lunch box and water bottle usually get buried underneath all the paper on my desk, so I'll have to set myself some kind of reminder to dig them out at the right time.

Allergy Testing

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've known since childhood that I have food allergies. Unfortunately, not many other people have believed me, including my parents and doctors. One doctor who did listen to me, however, was my doctor when I was living in Rhodes. He advised me to request an allergy test on my return to the UK. Once my laughter had died down, I explained to him that in the UK it's not so easy as walking into a surgery and asking for what you need. This practice seemed crazy to him, and rightly so. Surely it makes more sense, and is much more cost effective, for the NHS to diagnose peoples’ allergies that to repeatedly treat their reactions. Apparently not. According to my wonderful GP, there's no point in me knowing what I'm allergic to. He says that I'll work out my allergies on my own eventually, and even if I know what I'm allergic to I probably won't be able to avoid most of it anyway.

The problem, I believe, is that people who don't suffer from allergies don't understand the affect they have on your body. My main problem is eczema, which is classed as a 'skin allergy'. Most of my reactions are contact reactions, ie things that my skin literally comes into contact with, but eczema is also promoted by food allergies. The assumption by the medical world seems to be that eczema just causes itchy skin, but believe me it has a much greater effect. Everyone is different, but when I have an allergic reaction it makes my whole body feel ill. Sometimes my whole body or parts of it swell up, including my tongue and throat, which can mean I have problems breathing. Sometimes I feel so tired all I'm able to do is curl up on my bed.

As my GP suggested, I have been able to figure out a lot of my triggers through educating myself and omitting certain foods from my diet. Although this method can deliver results, it’s really just trial and error. The phrase ‘needle in a haystack’ comes to mind. Most recently, following a plant- based diet has had a huge positive impact on my health generally. There are some triggers, though, that I don't think I would ever find on my own. I figure that if I haven't worked it out yet (I'm 32 years old) then I'm probably not going to. So, when I saw that my local health food shop was offering private allergy tests, I signed myself up.

Using the Asyra Pro test, a simple and non-invasive machine that looks at your health status, the nutritional therapist was able to answer a lot of my questions that I have been asking for years. All that was required of me was to hold two electrodes and answer a few questions about my health and lifestyle. She seemed pleased that I was already following a plant-based diet. This makes a refreshing change, as most people look at you like you’ve just landed in your spacecraft when you mention that you live a plant-based lifestyle.

Although I’ve always suspected that I have complex food allergies, the results surprised even me. Apparently, if someone has food allergies, the computer usually displays about twenty foods that they are intolerant to. My list contained over forty.

There were some triggers which I would never eat anyway, such as clams, duck and haddock. However, knowing that I am allergic to them could explain some of my severe reactions in the past. Although I wouldn’t eat a clam, if I’ve come into contact with something that has been made near clams, that could explain why in the past I have suddenly blown up like a balloon with no known cause.

Among my other allergies, which I would usually eat but now need to avoid, are cabbage, caffeine (I knew that one already really, I’ve just been hoping I can pretend it’s not true), cane sugar, coconut (not worried about this one, I hate coconut), cucumber, ginger, mango, rice milk (gutted!), mushrooms, nutmeg, onion, pea and raisin. The list goes on, and if I avoided it all completely then there wouldn’t be much left for me to eat. The two main culprits, however, are dairy products and gluten. Dairy products are no surprise, as they are a common trigger for eczema. I remember when I first read that dairy products are not good for eczema sufferers. I was horrified that my doctor had not even suggested I cut down on dairy. I spent most of my childhood in horrific pain as a result of my condition, and my life was greatly affected by it, yet here was a simple solution that all the adults in my life were too stubborn to try. As I’ve been trying to follow a plant-based diet anyway, having a medical reason to give up dairy can only encourage me to be healthier.

The real surprise in my allergy test is that I can’t eat gluten. I’ve long suspected that bread is not good for my skin, but I assumed it was the wheat I was reacting to and not the gluten. This piece of information, I believe, is the key to me solving my food problems. It means I have to give up my beloved oats and replace them with buckwheat and quinoa. I can no longer eat couscous or drink beer, but if I don’t eat gluten then the hope is that my body can begin to repair itself and I can re-introduce some of the other foods into my diet.

When I first signed up for the allergy test, I was apprehensive and worried that I would just be faced with another ‘grown up’ telling me I was lying or trying to get attention and that really there’s nothing wrong with me. What I found, however, was a caring professional who genuinely wants to help me turn my life around. I’ll keep you posted on how the diet changes go.